DVD Sales: Legion and Avatar Claim Top Spot

May 25th, 2010

While this week's collection of new releases was less than impressive, there were still a number of bright spots on this week's DVD Sales Chart. Firstly, we had a new number one, as Legion led the way with 457,000 units sold. However, in terms of total dollars, it was second with $8.21 million in sales.
Avatar was close behind with 449,000 units sold and first in total take with $8.39 million in sales for the week. In total it has sold 6.76 million units, which makes it the best-selling DVD of 2010. Edge of Darkness opened in third place with 343,000 units / $5.83 million for the week. Meanwhile, Daybreakers was right behind in terms of units sold at 303,000, but slightly ahead in terms of revenue generated at $6.05 million. Rounding out the top five was Tooth Fairy, which added 167,000 units / $2.84 million for the weekend for totals of 622,000 units / $10.64 million after two.

The re-releases of first two Toy Story movies placed seventh and eighth with 143,000 and 137,000 units respectively. Not bad for a re-release, especially since the pair were released on Blu-ray a few weeks earlier. The final new release to chart was Daria: The Complete Series. The 8-disc set sold just under 80,000 units, which was enough for 12th place on this week's chart. However, thanks to its TV on DVD pricing, it generated $3.92 million in revenue, enough for fifth place. This is an excellent start and the studio should be very happy.

It was yet another week without a top notch Blu-ray release. Overall sales were down 11% to $19.1 million. More importantly, this was 19% lower than the same weekend last year, which was the worst year-over-year decline in the format's history. However, to be fair, this week last year saw the release of Taken, which sold 1.95 million DVDs and this is more than this week's the top five selling DVDs sold combined. Hell, last year's second place release, Underworld: Rise of the Lycans, sold roughly as much as the top three DVDs sold this year. There is a lot of weakness in the market at the moment. Compared to DVD, Blu-ray represented 13% of the total market and 20% of the top 20 comparison, which is actually an improvement on last week. Avatar remained the number one selling Blu-ray with roughly 300,000 units while its running tally is closing in on 4 million units. This is about 50% higher than the previous record holder, The Dark Knight. The best-selling new release of the week was Legion with close to 200,000 units, while Edge of Darkness just beat out Daybreakers for third place with both film selling about 125,000 units. All three of these films sold more than 30% of their total units in High Definition.